


Meg's Wine and Spirits

by BleedingInk



Series: Colorful Canvasses and Spirited Drinks [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Break Up, Drinking, Drunk Castiel, Drunkenness, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Megstiel - Freeform, New Year's Eve, New Year's Kiss, Pansexual Castiel (Supernatural), Store Owner Meg, Unrequited Crush, Well Almost New Year's Kiss, liquor store
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-25 20:43:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13220880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleedingInk/pseuds/BleedingInk
Summary: Meg is the proud owner of a liquor store and Castiel is the regular client she has an unfortunate crush on.





	Meg's Wine and Spirits

Meg’s Wine & Spirits hadn’t been an easy project to get off the ground, but she had managed. Almost a year, more bureaucracy than she cared to deal with, a lot of fights with the bank and most of her money invested in remodeling the old place later, she was the proud owner of the only liquor store in several blocks that carried some very specific brands. It stood in the middle of the street right in front of a church, which Meg thought was hilarious, but clearly bothered some of the parishioners.

“This is a den of iniquity!” a woman with a severe brown bun and a scandalized expression had informed her the third day after the inauguration. “It has no business being in front of a house of worship! You’re going to corrupt our children…!”

“Lady, who do you take me for?” Meg replied, rolling her eyes. “I’m not gonna go selling alcohol to kids. I don’t want my license revoked.”

The woman with the bun stared at her open-mouthed and offended, but a soft giggle came from behind one of the stacks. Meg smiled despite the confrontation. At least someone agreed with her sense of humor. It was just an added bonus when that someone turned out to be a fairly good looking guy who approached the counter with a bottle of her finest red wine in his hands.

“Naomi, I don’t know what you expect to get from this,” he told the lady. “It’s not like she is going to sell the store just because you demand she does.”

Naomi wasn’t amused by this point. She crossed her arms over her chest and huffed and puffed for a couple of seconds before she announced she would be waiting in the car. She practically stomped on her way to the door, which only made the good looking guy she was with chuckle a little more. He had dark hair and little crinkles around his bright blue eyes.

Meg took a liking to him immediately.

“The old ball and chain?” she asked, tilting her head towards the door.

“God, no,” the guy said, with a grimace. “Just a friend of the family. How much for this?”

“You have very expensive taste,” Meg commented as she rang him out and put the bottle into a brown paper bag.

“I have some clients I need to suck up to,” he replied and held out his hand to receive the bottle but Meg didn’t give it to him.

“I’m gonna have to see some ID.”

“Are you serious?”

“You already have your wallet out,” she pointed out. “Might as well satisfy me or you’re gonna have to suck to your clients with brand store wine.”

The guy stared at her in disbelief, but then he smiled as if there was some kind of joke. Meg figured it was, but she wasn’t going to be the one to tell him that as she analyzed his driver’s license very carefully. He had a very unusual name, but she liked the sound of it when she said it out loud:

“Very well, Castiel. It seems you check out.”

“Glad I could put your mind at ease,” he said, as he received the bag and his change. “You know, if you wanted to know my name, you could have just asked.”

Meg wasn’t even mad that he had seen through her very obvious ploy. She kept her eyes on the back of his head as he stalked towards the door. Just before he crossed it, he turned his head over his shoulder. Meg smirked and winked at him and he returned the biggest smile before he scurried away. She could have sworn he blushed a little bit.

She had worked at retail long enough to know that it wasn’t a good idea to flirt with the clients, but now that she was the owner of the store, she figured she could make an exception if she wanted to. And she always made an exception with Castiel. He was extremely handsome and smart, always wearing a suit and tie and sometimes a large tan trench coat, chatting back to whatever topic of conversation she brought up. He showed up once in a while and he always bought the best of whatever she had to offer. Meg learned that he was an art dealer, which meant he rubbed shoulders with a lot of people who liked their alcohol fancy and expensive. Meg saw a business opportunity and offered to provide the champagne for his next event.

“That would be amazing. Thank you.”

“You should invite me sometime, too,” she added.

“Oh, are you interested in art?”

“No, but I’m interested in you.”

That might have been a little too direct. Usually their flirting and banter didn’t cross the line of just too people enjoying a little bit of witty conversation. It was the first time Meg outright proposed that they should meet outside their current casual encounters and it didn’t go as well as she expected it. Castiel laughed awkwardly and rubbed the back of his head. He paid her and left with a clumsy goodbye.

She didn’t see him for over a month and just as she was beginning to wonder if she had made him uncomfortable and lost one of her best regular clients, he showed up again.

Meg was stocking up the shelves when she spotted his tan trench coat. He held two bottles of whiskey in his hands, analyzing them with a frown of pure concentration between his eyebrows. He was so focused on it, in fact, that he didn’t hear or see her until Meg tapped him in the shoulder. He gave a little jump and then let out an awkward chuckle when he saw it was her.

“Hello.”

“Hey, haven’t seen you in a while,” Meg commented.

“Uh, yes. Expositions haven’t been so active this time of year and I haven’t really… uh…”

Meg arched an eyebrow and decided to ignore the fact he was acting like an awkward friend that hadn’t been answering to her texts.

“So what are you looking for there?” she asked, eyeing the bottles of whiskey. “That’s not usually what you buy for your guests.”

“No, this is not for a guest or a client. It’s for a… friend.”

He avoided her gaze, as if he was confessing something shameful and Meg immediately understood what was going on.

“A special friend?” she asked, tilting her head.

“Uh… yes,” he muttered.

Well, that was disappointing. In truth, Meg hadn’t really expected anything to come out from the casual flirting they sometimes engaged in and now it was awkward as hell. But she could reel it back and be professional.

“Well, if you want to impress her, that’s not gonna cut it,” she said, taking the bottles from his hand and returning them to the shelves. “Let me get you something real good from the back.”

The most expensive whiskey she had in the store was a limited edition of Devil’s Cask. It cost almost three hundred dollars, but Castiel paid them without a blink and asked Meg to put it in a gift bag and stick a bow on it.

“Thank you very much for this,” he said. He looked relieved, as it had been a very long day. “I was trying to find something meaningful, but I didn’t want to come on too strong…”

“Buying the most expensive whiskey in my store won’t be coming on too strong for your special gal there?” Meg joked.

Castiel laughed and rubbed the back of his neck again. Meg had come to associate that gesture with him running out of her store out of pure uncomfortableness, but he stuck around a few more seconds. At the end of it, Meg started to wish he hadn’t.

“It’s a… it’s a special guy,” he corrected her.

“Oh. Okay.”

“He, uh… he likes whiskey.”

“I figured,” Meg said. She really wanted this conversation to end, because it was awkward enough that she had been flirting with a gay client. “Well… let me know how it went.”

“Will do,” Castiel promised. “Thank you.”

He didn’t leave in a hurry like the last time, but Meg had the impression he was still walking a little lighter. With his head a little higher. Like he was particularly happy about something.

“Hey, Kev,” Meg shouted at her clerk. “I’ll be in the back for a minute.”

“Got it, boss.”

Meg usually made a point not to drink her own products, but that particular day, she figured she deserved a shot.

It was stupid. It really was. She knew next to nothing about him, she only saw him occasionally and they never had a chat that was deeper than what he was buying. Maybe she had wanted that to change and that was why she had been so relentless in her flirting and why she had deluded herself into thinking he was flirting back. Of course, if someone put a gun on her head now, she would deny everything.

“To crushing on an available guy next time, Meg,” she told herself. The whiskey burned as it slid down her throat.

She figured that would be the end of it. When Castiel came in the next time, their chat was amicable as he bought some more champagne for his clients, but Meg made no insinuations or dropped hints that she wanted to see him elsewhere. Castiel made no mention of the guy he had bought the whiskey for and Meg wasn’t going to ask, she really wasn’t. It was none of her business and she had been plenty unprofessional already, she didn’t to fuck things up any further…

“So did he like the Devil?” she asked as Castiel was paying and she felt like kicking herself mentally. If she could have held for ten more seconds…

Castiel blinked his blue eyes at her, disconcerted.

“What?”

“The Devil,” Meg explained. “Your special guy?”

“Oh! Yes. Yes, he enjoyed it very much.” His smile grew just a little more radiant, as if he was remembering something especially pleasant. “I did, too. Normally, I don’t like that kind of drink, but you have excellent taste.”

“Well, there’s a reason I run this place,” Meg shrugged, feigning modesty. “I can get you another special drink he might like if you want to give him something nice for Christmas.”

“I already bought his Christmas present.”

Already bought him a Christmas present? Thanksgiving had been last week! Maybe Castiel was one of those super organized people who did all their shopping online and early. Or maybe he was way into this guy and excited to get him a present for the first Christmas they would be spending together.

Despite Meg’s best effort, she felt a small pang of pain in her chest at the thought.

“But his birthday is in January,” Castiel added. He must have seen Meg’s disappointment in her face and interpreted that the reason was that she couldn’t make another excessively expensive sale. “I might buy something for him again here.”

“Okay. You let me know then,” Meg said, forcing a smile.

Castiel and the “special guy” didn’t make it to January.

The days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve were very busy for Meg. A lot of people were stocking up on champagne and other beverages for their parties and the “last drink of their lives” before they started a “healthier lifestyle”. Meg calculated she would see them again before Valentine’s Day, especially if they happened not to have a boyfriend or girlfriend by then.

“You doing something special for New Year, boss?” Kevin asked her, leaning against the mop he was supposed to be cleaning the floor with. “My mom, my girlfriend and I are going to a concert.”

“Oh, which band?”

“The Philharmonic.”

“Ah.”

Kevin had been an advanced placement student in his high school (a fact he had included in his CV very prominently) and even now he was excelling in his college classes. Meg had hired him because she figured a responsible college boy would cause her less trouble than a frat dude that would try to use his employee’s discount to get booze for his bros. She had been right, he perfect, but occasionally, she was reminded that Kevin would leave one day to do smart people stuff and she would have to start the cycle of finding a new clerk all over again.

“What about you, Miss Masters?”

Meg had desisted on trying to get him to call her by her first name.

“Guess I’ll just stay home and watch the ball drop on TV,” she said, with a shrug. After she returned from visiting her dad and brother for Christmas, she hadn’t really had time to contact and make plans with her handful of friends. But she didn’t mind spending time alone.

“You’re not going out with Mr. Novak?” Kevin asked.

Meg did a double-take. She didn’t think Kevin knew Castiel’s last name. Whenever he was in the store, she usually was the one to handle whatever he needed.

“You know Castiel?”

“Oh, yeah. He’s a professor in one of my Art courses,” Kevin explained. “He also runs a bunch of art galleries and supports artists all over the state. He’s like, a big deal.”

Meg wasn’t really surprised by that information. Castiel had always carried himself with an air of great sophistication and calmness that now that Meg thought about it, it made her crush on him even stupider. Even if Castiel was into women, why would he be interested in one that had nothing going for her except for her liquor store and cheap flirting?

“Nah, he’s just a client,” she told Kevin. “Tell you what, why don’t you take the afternoon off to prepare for your concert and I’ll close early?”

Kevin wholeheartedly approved of that plan. In any case, most people were going home because of the cold or getting ready for their celebration, so except for a couple people who had postponed buying their alcohol until literally the last second, the store was calm. At seven, Meg moved to draw the blinds when…

A loud knock on the door startled her. She stared with fear at the disheveled hobo at the other side of the door, wondering if she’d time to go grab the baseball bat from behind the counter before he tried to force his way inside. But after the initial panic ran off and the hobo gave the door another tapping, this time gentler, she noticed his eyes. Bright blue eyes she had fixed her stare on so many times.

She opened the door a crack.

“Castiel?”

“Oh, huh… hi, Meg,” he slurred incoherently. “You closed? Are you closing?”

“I’m… I was about to,” Meg said. “What the hell happened to you?”

It was a fair question: his hair was in complete disarray and his cheeks were covered by a beard that had at least several days. Instead of his usual suit and elegant trench coat, he was wearing a red hoodie that underneath a black anorak he hadn’t bothered to zip up and grey sweatpants with a suspicious stain on them.

“I just… I’ve been…” He interrupted himself mid-excuse and shook his head, as if to indicate it didn’t matter. “Hey, do you think I can buy… something? It won’t take long, I promise. I just…”

“Are you drunk?” Meg asked, and then decided that was self-explanatory. “Did you drive here?”

“No, I took one of those… you know, one of those cars that you call and they pick you up,” Castiel said. He giggled at himself, as if the fact he couldn’t remember the word for “taxi” was funny in his inebriated mind. “Anyway, can I get in?”

Meg hesitated. On one hand, she didn’t think it was healthy for Castiel to be drinking even more than it already had. God knew what could happen to him if something happened to him and she didn’t want that on her conscience. On the other, it was cold as fuck, it was New Year’s Eve, and Castiel could pass out on the pavement before another taxi came to pick him up or if he tried to walk home. And she definitely didn’t want that on her conscience.

“Uh… sure, yeah. Come on in.” She opened the door for him and immediately closed and locked as soon as he stumbled inside. The fact she knew this particular hobo-looking guy didn’t mean there weren’t other hobos who didn’t have good intentions. “Are you alright?”

“Yes, I’m fine. Do you have… vodka, maybe?” he asked. His steps were hesitant and even though he was managing to say understandable sentences, he was clearly not thinking straight. He grabbed a random bottle from the shelves and examined it, frowning as if he had forgotten how to read. Meg didn’t try to turn on the lights again to help him. “Or some of that whiskey you sold me… no, not whiskey. I don’t want to… no whiskey.”

He put the bottle back on the shelf, or he tried to, but what he did instead was knock another down that crashed on the floor with a loud din. Castiel jumped back and looked at the broken glass and the puddle of white wine at his feet, blinking as if he had no idea how that’d happened.

“I am… so sorry. I’ll pay for that. I’ll clean it. Just give me…”

“Castiel. Cas,” Meg called him. She walked up to him, put a hand on his arm and gently pulled him away from the shelves before he broke another bottle. “Stop. Just… shit, what the hell happened to you?”

Castiel turned his face towards her, all his drunken giddiness suddenly gone. What was left was something deeply sorrowful, something that ached him so much he had tried to drink himself into a stupor to forget about it.

“Nothing,” he mumbled, stepping away from Meg’s touch. “Nothing. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come. I’ll… I’ll go home…”

He tried to take a step, but he stumbled with his own feet. Meg caught him and kept him standing up straight before he hit the floor or worse, an entire shelf of breakable alcohol.

“Hey, it’s okay, hey. Why don’t you sit down? You look tired.”

“I am tired,” Castiel admitted. He slid down with his back against the counter and sank his face against his knees. “I haven’t… I haven’t been sleeping well…”

“You don’t say.” Meg crunched by his side and analyzed his face. “Do you need to vomit?”

Castiel blinked again, as if he now was realizing something very important.

“Yes.”

Meg helped him get out of his anorak and held him before he knelt in front of the toilet and barfed in violent heaves. At least he wouldn’t die of alcohol poisoning, she thought as she helped him sit up the toilet seat and cleaned the vomit from the side of his lips with a piece of toilet paper.

“I am so sorry,” he kept apologizing. “I am… I’m not usually this much of a mess.”

He leaned against the wall in the very small bathroom stall and his eyes fluttered shut.

“No, don’t fall asleep.” Meg gave slapped him gently on the cheeks until he woke up. “Do you want me to take you home?”

It was also a stupid question. She was gonna take him home whether he wanted it or not, because he was in no condition of getting there himself.

“No,” Castiel mumbled as Meg checked the anorak’s pockets for his wallet. “No. I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to… the bed still smells like him.”

He said something else, but Meg was unable to understand him between the sobbing and the way his voice broke. It was a little bit pathetic, and also a little bit heartbreaking. She called an Uber to come for them, knowing full well that the waiting time would be uncomfortably long since most people were probably on their way to their New Year’s Eve parties. She used it to pick the broken glass and mop the spilled wine in the aisle while Castiel regaled her with the story of how he’d ended up dead drunk in her store that night.

“I-I knew he was nervous,” he told Meg, between hiccups and more tears. “I knew… but when he asked me to go home with him for Christmas I thought that meant… but then we got there and he introduced me as _‘a friend’_. A fucking… friend.”

“That’s bullshit,” Meg agreed, a little surprised that Castiel would swear. He always seemed so composed and in control… well, he was spiraling now, so foul language was the least of his issues. She threw away the glass in the recycling bin and checked her cellphone. The Uber was only five minutes away, but it might as well have been an eternity, because she had to keep hearing about Castiel and his ex:

“His… his mom and his brother, they were so nice, but he wouldn’t tell them we were together and I had to sleep on the couch on the living room. I was… I was furious with him, so in the drive back, we had this huge fight and we said… we said so many things, Meg… and I told him… I told him ‘ _Well, if you don’t want to be with me out in the open, you better take your things and leave’_.”

The Uber finally signaled that it was outside.

“Thank God,” Meg muttered as she crouched against next to Castiel with his anorak in hand. “Do you think you can stand up, Cas?”

Castiel stared at her with a pitiful look in his blue eyes.

“I… I didn’t think he would do it,” he muttered.

“That sucks, Cas.”

“It’s been two days.”

“Well, if he left right after Christmas, it’s actually been five. How much did you drink?”

“I don’t know. I miss him so… so much.” Castiel began crying again and Meg cringed as the car honked outside.

“Okay, Cas, listen. You don’t have to go home,” she promised him. Castiel looked up at her, his eyes bloodshot and his face red and wet. “You can crash at my place. But I need you to get up of the floor now. Can you do that for me?”

“Y-yes,” he stammered. He sniffed and then repeated with a firmer tone: “Yes.”

It was a slow process. He had to hang unto both the counter and Meg to manage, and even then, she had to hold him up so he could walk. But even as she half-dragged him to the door, she noticed that he wasn’t leaning his full weight against her. So even drunk out of his mind he was still considerate enough to do that. So that was something.

The Uber driver gave them an amused look when she pushed Castiel into the backseat.

“Your friend started the celebration a little early, didn’t he?”

“Just drive,” Meg groaned, after telling him the address.

She kept an eye on Castiel in case they needed to stop for him to vomit again, but he had calmed down a little bit. He was leaning his forehead against the cool window and breathing very slowly, like the last outburst of tears had exhausted him. He didn’t open his eyes again until they parked in front of Meg’s building.

“Where are we?” he asked while she paid the driver and pulled Castiel out of the backseat.

“My place. I said you could crash here, remember?”

Castiel’s widened with surprise.

“I didn’t think you meant it.”

“Yeah, well… I don’t think you should be alone right now,” Meg replied, with a shrug.

It was surprising that Castiel could think at all in the state he was in. Meg deduced he figured she would take him home despite his pleas and just ditch him there. And she supposed she could have done that but then again… she felt a little bit responsible for him. She wouldn’t have been able to explain why.

“Alright, so just sit there while I get you some water,” she said, gently pushing him down on her pullout couch.

“Thank you,” Castiel said. “You have a lovely place.”

Meg snorted. She lived in a one bedroom apartment that was barely big enough for her and a plant that was yellow because sometimes she forgot to water it. The walls were paper-thin, so she could hear her neighbors fucking and the pipes whistling as they tried to deliver the hot water to her shower, and if something broke down, she would be lucky if she could find the landlord and get him to fix it. But she didn’t complain: it was all she could afford after putting all her money on the store and since business was looking good, she could move somewhere bigger when her lease was up.

“Drink. You’ll feel better,” she said, putting the glass of water in Castiel’s hand and sitting on her coffee table in front of him to make sure he obeyed.

Castiel took a couple of sips, still looking slightly disconcerted, as if the alcohol-induced mist in his brain was lifting and he was now realizing he had come to a stranger’s store to cry his heart out and he was now sitting in said stranger’s apartment. Because even though he had been buying Meg’s booze for months, practically since she opened, they were still not exactly friends.

Meg was also realizing this. It would be awkward as all fuck when he sobered up.

“I’m… gonna go get you a blanket or something.”

“Meg,” Castiel called her before she could get up. “Thank you. You… you didn’t have to do any of this. I… I’m really sorry.”

“We all do dumb stuff when we get our hearts broken.” Meg shrugged.

Castiel toyed with the glass in his hand. When he looked at her again, his blue eyes were a little clear, but his tongue was still heavy and slurry. So Meg could easily dismiss what he said next as being part of his drunken chatter:

“If I hadn’t already been dating him when you asked me out… I… I would have said yes.”

Meg move back, surprised and confused by that statement.

“I… that’s very nice, Cas, but… aren’t you…?”

Castiel closed his eyes and shook his head, as if it was a common misunderstanding he’d had to deal with a lot.

“I don’t… I don’t fall in love with people’s genitals,” he said, bluntly. “I fall in love with their minds. With who they are. I…”

“Still doesn’t explain it. You’re like this super smart artistic guy and I sell booze for a living.”

Castiel chuckled and leaned forwards. Their knees grazed each other and Meg found herself caught by his blue gaze.

“You’re hardworking. You built that place from the ground up and you’re proud of it, as you should be. And you’re so passionate and so funny, you really… you really don’t see all these things in yourself?”

Meg spent several seconds frozen, unable to find an answer, as if it was her who had drunk until she couldn’t put together two coherent thoughts. She opened her mouth, even though she wasn’t sure what to say…

A loud thunder interrupted her. Meg startled and looked outside the window, at the sky blackened by the clouds heavy with snow as more thunder and screaming came from the street. For a second or two, she had no idea what was going on, but then she remembered.

“Oh. Oh, right.”

“Happy New Year,” Castiel wished her, with a tipsy smile.

Meg looked at him again. He was leaning even closer and she feared he was about to fall over, but when he closed his eyes, she realized what really was going on. She put a finger on his lips to stop him before he got any closer. Castiel stared at her, confused.

“That’s not happening,” she told him.

“Why not?” he asked, frowning. “You… you like me, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but first, you’ve just been drinking nonstop for God knows how many days.”

Castiel immediately moved backwards and blew into his hand to smell his breath. Meg suppressed a laugh at the gesture.

“Second, I need some time to scrub the image of you vomiting and crying over your ex from my mind,” she added. “And third… you’re drunk and brokenhearted right now. I deserve a little better than being your dumb rebound.”

Castiel rubbed his temples and his eyes, like he was taking in those words.

“Yes. You’re absolutely right,” he agreed. “You deserve better. You _are_ better.”

Meg took the compliment for what it was: the ramblings of a guy that wasn’t completely in his right mind at the moment. She stood up and headed for the room to get the promised blanket.

“What… what do we do now?” Castiel asked.

She figured he didn’t mean that night in particular. She stopped in her bedroom’s doorway and slowly turned to him.

“Well… you can try to not drink yourself to death for a couple of months,” she suggested. “And afterwards, when you’re feeling a little better, you can ask me out. And maybe, if I hadn’t met anyone in the meantime, I’ll say yes.”

Castiel stared at her and tilted his head.

“Sounds like a good plan.”

When Meg returned with the blanket, he was sleeping on his stomach on the couch, snoring loudly. Meg lifted his head a little bit to place a pillow underneath it and gently covered him with the blanket. Castiel mumbled something incomprehensible, rolled over and snored some more. Meg smiled to herself and picked up his anorak from the floor. Something fell with a heavy thud from one of his pockets.

She stared at his phone for a few seconds, wondering. Then she picked it up and punched her number on it.

“Happy New Year to you too, Cas,” she whispered.


End file.
